http://textpattern.com/?v=4.4.1Adblock Plus and (a little) more - Bloghttps://adblockplus.org/
Sat, 01 Aug 2015 11:19:18 GMTWith new Firefox version, mass ABP-installation now available on all major browsers
Among a host of other improvements, Adblock Plus for Firefox 2.6.10 will allow IT administrators of large networks like companies or school systems to seamlessly deploy Adblock Plus across their entire network …. Plus a whole lot of other upgrades and improvements on the browser where it all started.]]>

This feature is already available for the other big browsers, but we needed to tackle one issue to get it on Firefox. That last hurdle was allowing administrators to preconfigure the first-run page to be disabled. The first-run page is the page where you are told about Adblock Plus’s options and given the opportunity to customize it right after you install it. While this is helpful for individual users, no IT administrator installing ABP over a network with hundreds or even thousands of computers would want to deal with this for every. single. installation …

So now they don’t have to – and therefore can easily install ABP on all their machines. Thus … saving their company bandwidth, increasing its security and cutting down on distractions resulting from ads.

Besides the big news for administrators, this update has several other improvements and fixes. For instance, Adblock Plus now works perfectly in Firefox 41. In addition, we improved notifications in two key ways, showing them immediately after download instead of waiting for a browser restart and adding a global opt-out for users who don’t want to receive them anymore. For a complete list of improvements see the accompanying release entry by my colleague Wladimir.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/with-new-firefox-version-mass-abp-installation-now-available-on-all-major-browsers
Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:28:14 GMTBen Williamstag:adblockplus.org,2015-07-28:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/edbd24071866c9da5af8a46268a5a4f5University students validate LSD Project
Simon Fraser University conducted a study to test how efficient Adblock Plus is. They found that it significantly reduced network data usage, something that has direct implications for IT admins on large networks (like companies and universities) interested in our new Adblock Plus for Administrators feature.]]>
It’s not what you’re thinking.

The University is British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University, where students tested Adblock Plus on a live department network and measured enormous (25 to 40 percent) reductions in IP traffic when Adblock Plus is installed on the endpoint computers.

The LSD Project is our Large Scale Deployment project, through which we developed the Adblock Plus for Administrators feature. We started including this a few weeks back in the latest update for Chrome. This feature lets network admins easily deploy Adblock Plus across large scale networks, like those found in universities, schools and companies of all sizes.

Simon Fraser University published the results of their research in a report entitled Adblock Plus Efficacy Study, which demonstrated that installing Adblock Plus on network endpoints saves bandwidth — 25 percent bandwidth savings by blocking web-based advertisements and 40 percent bandwidth savings when also blocking video trailers.

Research methodology

The research study was conducted from March 15, 2015 to May 1, 2015 with 103 students participating. A portion of the university computer network was configured with computers divided by those running Adblock Plus and those without Adblock Plus. All computers were part of a flat network with gateway provided by a Palo Alto VM-100 firewall. The Palo Alto firewall provided application layer visibility into network traffic. Since all traffic traversed the firewall this methodology provided extremely accurate data analysis on the type and volume of traffic. Students were instructed to surf among a designated basket of URLs (see infographic above), mimicking how they would perform research for a paper or casually surf. They were required to spend at least 5-15 minutes on each site.

Computers running the Adblock Plus browser extension saw a 25 percent decrease in associated total data usage during web-browsing sessions. The trend was even more pronounced when http-video sessions were taken in isolation; computers running Adblock Plus revealed a cumulative 40 percent decrease in total data usage.

The research study concluded (as we expected) that by filtering out online advertisements Adblock Plus significantly reduced network data usage.

Other benefits of running Adblock Plus on large networks include:

mitigating instances of malvertising and other security risks

decreasing employee/student distraction

We’ve always assumed that Adblock Plus makes your network faster, and now we have some proof that it does.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/university-students-validate-lsd-project
Wed, 08 Jul 2015 12:15:00 GMTBen Williamstag:adblockplus.org,2015-07-07:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/07df2f1da646e4746ae63703b9703598Major Adblock Plus update for Chrome includes feature for mass installation on big networks
Adblock Plus today released version 1.9 for Chrome, Opera and Safari. This is the first update in around three months, and it includes improvements to performance and a new feature for IT admins that will make it significantly easier to deploy Adblock Plus across very large networks. ]]>

Today we updated Adblock Plus for Chrome, Opera and Safari to version 1.9. The update includes a series of bug fixes, some improvements in performance and a new feature that will allow network administrators to suppress the first run page in Chrome (coming soon to Firefox). This last element is very important, because it is the next step in a project we’re calling Adblock Plus for administrators that is intended to allow administrators of large networks to seamlessly download Adblock Plus across entire networks.

For a more detailed rundown of the changes see my colleague Sebastian’s post. And don’t worry: Adblock Plus always updates automatically, so you don’t have to run an update to take advantage of these new features.

Adblock Plus for administrators

For some time now, we’ve been working on what we’ve been jokingly referring to as the LSD project (for Large Scale Deployment, of course) with network administrators in mind. These IT administrators, who take care of substantial networks at universities, businesses or organizations, often want to install Adblock Plus to cut down on distraction, save bandwidth and keep their networks safe from threats like “malvertising.”

With Adblock Plus 1.9 system administrators will now be able to suppress the first run page. The first run page is the web page that appears after you install Adblock Plus, giving you immediate customization options that are valuable for individual users. But if you’re trying to install Adblock Plus on thousands of computers at once, you might prefer to skip this page. Now you can! We are still optimizing large scale deployments, so stay tuned for more updates soon.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/major-adblock-plus-update-for-chrome-includes-feature-for-mass-installation-on-big-networks
Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:37:17 GMTBen Williamstag:adblockplus.org,2015-06-16:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/45978cdfb4530aa8386972bed4686b96New role
As Wladimir has just announced, I’m taking over as Chief Technology Officer of Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus.

My first Adblock Plus patch has landed a little more than three years ago. I’ve joined Eyeo back when it was just a handful of people working on Adblock Plus for Firefox and new ports for Chrome and Android. I’ve worked on those projects, as well as on scaling and open sourcing our infrastructure, libadblockplus, a native wrapper around the Adblock Plus code, and Adblock Plus for Internet Explorer. By now I’ve contributed to pretty much all of our projects, wherever I felt my time was best spent. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on Adblock Browser for Android, our new mobile browser based on Firefox.

My first Adblock Plus patch has landed a little more than three years ago. I’ve joined Eyeo back when it was just a handful of people working on Adblock Plus for Firefox and new ports for Chrome and Android. I’ve worked on those projects, as well as on scaling and open sourcing our infrastructure, libadblockplus, a native wrapper around the Adblock Plus code, and Adblock Plus for Internet Explorer. By now I’ve contributed to pretty much all of our projects, wherever I felt my time was best spent. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on Adblock Browser for Android, our new mobile browser based on Firefox.

And ever since I joined Eyeo, I’ve been acting as Wladimir’s de-facto right hand man. We both wanted to build a company that essentially works like an open source project. People should work on the things they care about, when and where they want. Everyone, staff or volunteer, should be able to contribute to everything. Decisions should be made based on consensus, not authority. And instead of asking ourselves what to open source and what to discuss in the public, we should ask ourselves the opposite question: What shouldn’t be public? (Turns out, not much.) We’ve achieved much of that, but there is still room for improvement, and a constant need to adjust our structure, processes and communication channels to meet these goals as we grow. That is, and will continue to be, a major part of my role.

Wladimir will continue to play a central part in the Adblock Plus project, and at Eyeo. As a module owner and super reviewer, he will continue to be in charge of largely the same projects as before. As a co-founder of Eyeo, his values have been shaping its culture, and we’ve built a great team that shares these values. We will continue to respect our users’ privacy and choices. Giving people the power to decide what they see and expose online is, after all, what we’re all about.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/new-role
Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:41:54 GMTFelix Dahlketag:adblockplus.org,2015-06-11:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/095348348aa9710927f9a291b754fd13Changing roles
I’ve been the CTO of Eyeo since we founded it four years ago to put the Adblock Plus project on a more solid basis. This made sense, after all I created the Adblock Plus project and had been solely responsible for all things technical for five years. However, as the development team has been growing it became obvious that I’m not the best person to do this job. So, as of now I’m just a developer on the team and the new CTO is my colleague Felix Dahlke (fhd). This sounds like a bigger change than it really is, so I’ll try to answer all questions in advance.]]>
I’ve been the CTO of Eyeo since we founded it four years ago to put the Adblock Plus project on a more solid basis. This made sense, after all I created the Adblock Plus project and had been solely responsible for all things technical for five years. However, as the development team has been growing it became obvious that I’m not the best person to do this job. So, as of now I’m just a developer on the team and the new CTO is my colleague Felix Dahlke (fhd). This sounds like a bigger change than it really is, so I’ll try to answer all questions in advance.

Why are you doing this?

A CTO is primarily a manager. You make all kinds of decisions so that other people can work efficiently, developing code typically isn’t part of the job description. While we tried to keep management tasks minimal at Eyeo by distributing responsibility in the team (e.g. via module ownership), I’ve had lots of management tasks and very little development on my agenda lately. Also, the scope of our work has grown enormously over the years and I had to stay at least minimally involved in projects that I personally don’t care about. This isn’t something I’m happy with, and also not something I can keep up for long.

Why now?

Mostly because giving up control is hard. It took time to admit to myself that I’m not capable of doing my job well. Also, a year ago it would have been hard to replace me in this role. By now the expertise of my colleagues has grown significantly and there are only few areas left without a backup for me.

Do you plan to leave the project?

No, I don’t have any such plans. I rather hope to be more involved in the development of the project again, especially in Adblock Plus for Firefox.

Will the project change course now?

I don’t think so. Felix and me have been working together for almost three years and we have the same opinion on most things. And it’s not like we’ll stop discussing decisions all of a sudden.

What will actually change?

In reality, not so much. Felix has been increasingly taking over management tasks from me for a while now, some time ago we’ve even split up the project oversight between the two of us. We are merely changing titles to reflect this development correctly. I’m still going to be the owner of the Core and Adblock Plus for Firefox modules, but I hope to have more time and to do a better job here now. I’m also still overseeing several other modules, merely the Infrastructure module is no longer my responsibility.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/changing-roles
Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:28:24 GMTWladimir Palanttag:adblockplus.org,2015-05-07:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/8d6d81d85ed69f200ee4f9d160abe805Content blocking in Safari 9 and iOS 9: good news? Or the death knell of ad blocking on Safari?
Apple recently announced a new mechanism for Safari and iOS extensions to block content. In short, either this new API will improve Adblock Plus performance on Safari or it will force us to rely upon an inferior blocking format that would essentially kill ad blocking on Safari.]]>
Apple recently announced a new mechanism for Safari and iOS extensions to block content. This is the first time since Safari 5.1 that new extension APIs have been added to Safari, so it was a nice surprise. We appreciate and support Apple’s attempts to finally catch up on extensions, but those latest changes will create either the best possible landscape for Safari extensions, or the worst – especially for Adblock Plus.

In short, either this new API will improve Adblock Plus performance on Safari or it will force us to rely upon an inferior blocking format that would essentially kill ad blocking on Safari.

So far very little is known about Content Blocking Extensions, available in Safari 9 and iOS 9. However, according to the announcements there are so called “block lists”, which are JSON files, that can be registered by the extension. Those lists are not (yet) documented but the announcement includes an example:

This mechanism is entirely different from the one used by Adblock Plus on any other platform (including current versions of Safari), where we can run arbitrary code on request, blocking requests depending on their URL and context.

With this new mechanism, we’d need to convert Adblock Plus filter lists to a block list like the one above. However, most of our filters aren’t as simple as the example above. So, we are nervously awaiting how powerful their block lists will be, most importantly when it comes to matching the document domain and request type, as well as regular expression matching of URLs and recursive exception rules.

The best case is that the new API will help us to improve the performance and ad blocking experience on Safari, and paves the way for an iOS ad blocker. If their block list format turns out to be useless, however, that could mean the end of ad blocking on Safari, as the old mechanism relying on the onbeforeloadDOM event and safari.self.tab.canLoad will get deprecated now.

Update (2015-06-11): Apparently, some sources, including the Guardian, TechRadar and Gizmodo, misinterpreted this blog post. They mistakenly report that Safari 9 and iOS 9 come with a content blocking feature that would make Adblock Plus redundant. However, this is not the case. Content Blocking Extensions are merely an API allowing developers to implement extensions like Adblock Plus in an efficient way. We are not crying about Apple taking over our business. They don’t. We merely pointed out that the new API they are going to provide us with, which eventually is going to replace the old one, might be inferior and putting ad blocking in general – not only in our case – at risk.

Update (2015-06-14): An article with details on the new content blocking mechanism has just been published on the WebKit website. But as we suspected, in it’s current state there are still some issues, which render Content Blocking Extensions insufficient, as outlined in our email to the WebKit mailing list.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/content-blocking-in-safari-9-and-ios-9-good-news-or-the-death-knell-of-ad-blocking-on-safari
Wed, 10 Jun 2015 14:29:15 GMTSebastian Noacktag:adblockplus.org,2015-06-10:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/bc7991f964af90d5c485392af08b0cd7Another court, another (obvious) win for ad blocking ... and Acceptable Ads too
Ad blocking has again been found 100 percent legal, this time according to a Munich regional court which also legitimated our Acceptable Ads initiative. (Just like last time) a group of massive publishers took us to court, and just like last time the court said, “uh, no.”]]>
We hate to keep reporting yawn-inducing, self-evident news – but it’s our duty to inform you that ad blocking has been found 100 percent legal (again). This time the court weighed in on our Acceptable Ads initiative as well … and it turns out that’s OK, too.

The reaction of the court was just the same though: ad blocking is just fine.

For those of you interested in the details, here’s a quick rundown of the facts:

The plaintiffs (the parties that sued us) are Pro 7/Sat 1 and RTL Interactive. These companies are large television broadcasters with many websites. The defendant is Eyeo GmbH (the company that administers Adblock Plus).

The lawsuit charged that users should not be allowed to block ads on their sites, and that we should not be allowed to offer our Acceptable Ads initiative.

The Munich judge ruled against the plaintiffs and in favor of Adblock Plus, upholding the right of Adblock Plus users everywhere to continue to block annoying ads and protect their privacy, as well as our right to continue to encourage better ads through our Acceptable Ads initiative.

Hairy lawsuits aside, now it’s time for us to concentrate on more important things like our new Adblock Browser. It’s also time to again invite publishers and advertisers to help us make nonintrusive ads that users accept.

As usual, you know where to find us.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/another-court-another-obvious-win-for-ad-blocking-and-acceptable-ads-too
Wed, 27 May 2015 14:16:10 GMTBen Williamstag:adblockplus.org,2015-05-27:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/c46bfcbae09419f6682a7aa908e3548dAdblock Browser is here
Today we are pleased to announce Adblock Browser for Android. Our first foray into a more complete mobile ad blocking solution will block annoying ads out of the box and is a great overall browser for your Android device.]]>
Today we are pleased to announce Adblock Browser for Android, our first foray into a more complete mobile ad blocking solution and a great browser to boot. Adblock Browser for Android will block annoying ads automatically, which can save you battery power, keep you safe from threats and give you control of your browsing on the go. For more information on technical aspects of it and our reasons for choosing this route, see this accompanying post by my colleague Felix.

As readers of this blog, you won’t be surprised to know that Adblock Browser comes pre-installed with Adblock Plus. Here’s a rundown of its features:

Automatic adblocking – This is the first browser of its kind to offer users ad blocking as an integrated feature. As more users block ads on their desktop, many are finding little value in the ads served on their phones and tablets. A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers from last year found that most mobile ad clicks were accidents. Automatic ad blocking in a browser app is the crucial first step in a complete mobile ad blocking solution.

Total control – Annoying ads are always blocked, but users can encourage better ads by allowing nonintrusive ads to display. Users can change this setting at any time by simply tapping the Menu icon > Settings > Adblocking -> Adblocking -> Acceptable Ads.

Get the beta now!

From there just click the red Join button on the righthand side. Once you’ve joined go to “About this Community” and click the “Beta Opt-In.” There you can get exclusive access to the beta, install it and help us test it.

Important: it usually takes some time for Google to review apps, so you may not be able to download it immediately (even though you can join the community).*

Adblock Plus and the mobile challenge

But with ads comes danger. A recent study tested 2,146 Android apps, and found that in total they connected to 250,000 different URLs across almost 2,000 top-level domains. Around 30 percent linked to trackers and the average app connected to 40 ad URLs (full study here). Add to this the sheer annoyance factor, and the need for mobile ad blocking is clear.

For technical and privacy-related reasons, we have decided to tackle the issue carefully. There are other approaches out there, which we have looked into (and could reproduce). But these sometimes present privacy concerns — do you really want someone controlling your entire network? — not to mention potential legal and net neutrality issues.

We decided instead to keep the focus on the user. And we’ve got Step 1 checked off with Adblock Browser for Android. Help us make it better by testing it (see above for instructions) and stay tuned … cuz we’re just getting warmed up.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-browser-is-here
Wed, 20 May 2015 09:07:10 GMTBen Williamstag:adblockplus.org,2015-05-19:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/e484d9bb45b8eb1be4f958af5b1c6eadadblockplus.org is now powered by a new CMS engine
Five years ago we started using Anwiki to power adblockplus.org. The most important reason was our need to support translations in a way that could scale for many languages and many translators. Sadly, Anwiki has a number of issues that make working with it unnecessarily hard. We couldn’t find any existing products that do a better job so we decided to roll our own.]]>
Five years ago we started using Anwiki to power adblockplus.org. The most important reason was our need to support translations in a way that could scale for many languages and many translators. Sadly, Anwiki has a number of issues that make working with it unnecessarily hard. We couldn’t find any existing products that do a better job so we decided to roll our own.

The initial version of our CMS was implemented more than a year ago and initially powered only our small company website. Migrating adblockplus.org to it was a much bigger project and took lots of time. Today, I am happy to announce that the switch is complete and adblockplus.org is finally running on our CMS. The dependency graph for the migration consisted of 59 issues – that’s our biggest so far.

Why is the new system better than what we had before?

It’s primarily a static page generator, all pages are generated in advance rather than being rendered on the fly when they are requested. This is much more efficient in terms of server resources. We added static page generation to Anwiki but it wasn’t pretty.

Changes are implemented in a repository which provides a convenient way to view the source files and a useful change history. We added repository export to Anwiki but that wasn’t exactly convenient – already because changes to each language version were a separate repository commit.

We currently support three formats for content: very flexible Jinja2 templates, easy to write Markdown and raw HTML. The latter is our legacy format, it mostly exists to support migration from Anwiki – all content there had to be written in plain HTML.

Testing changes locally before these are pushed to production is easy.

Normally, when you need to change something on the website it will be a single commit in a single repository. With Anwiki, one would frequently have to change the website template in the Anwiki source code, static files on the web server and the actual content in the Anwiki database.

We plan to translate our website on Crowdin, just like Adblock Plus itself. Uploading our website strings to Crowdin still needs some work but it will be a huge step forward from the Anwiki translation UI.

For translators, the new engine supports meaningful string identifiers and optional comments to explain the context. This was a big issue with Anwiki, the context for some strings (particularly the ones not directly visible) being very non-obvious.

Even more importantly, the new system has more meaningful translation units. Anwiki would always break strings up at tag boundaries, so a sentence with a link would become three separate strings (start of the sentence, link text, end of the sentence). The new system allows certain tags inside a sentence, so that the sentence would still be translated as a single string.

The big outstanding issue is connecting the new website to Crowdin. Other than that, everything should be done – and for now look identical to the “old” website.

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https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblockplusorg-is-now-powered-by-a-new-cms-engine
Tue, 19 May 2015 16:07:44 GMTWladimir Palanttag:adblockplus.org,2015-05-19:0fd833a6b72d997c53eba671b829aed6/0ca997349b93fd77ed3096e4746cf550Restating the obvious: adblocking declared legal
Today, after a four-month trial, a regional court in Hamburg ruled that adblocking is, in fact, perfectly legal. What happened is that a few German publishers took us to court over the right to block ads, but thankfully every user’s right to determine what goes when they surf online was upheld.]]>
It may surprise readers of this blog to know that some advertiser groups believe blocking ads is illegal. They are upset that adblockers impede their multi-billion dollar business (or in this case, euros) of shoveling ads at you whether or not you like it or asked for it. In fact, a group of publishers in Hamburg, Germany was so upset that they actually took Adblock Plus to court.

Today, after a four-month trial, reasonable heads prevailed as the regional court in Hamburg ruled in our favor by declaring that ad blocking is, in fact, perfectly legal. I know, it’s restating the obvious. But it cost us lots of blood, sweat and tears nonetheless.

The Hamburg court decision is an important one because it sets a precedent that may help us avoid additional lawsuits and expenses defending what we feel is an obvious consumer right: giving people the ability to control their own screens by letting them block annoying ads and protect their privacy.

For those of you who are interested in legal proceedings, you may find these details fascinating:

The plaintiffs (the parties that sued us) are Zeit Online GmbH and Handelsblatt GmbH. These companies operate three websites: Zeit.de; Handelsblatt.com; and Wiwo.de. The defendant is Eyeo GmbH (which is the company that administers Adblock Plus).

The lawsuit charged that we should not be allowed to block ads on websites owned by the plaintiffs. They sought what is known as injunctive relief (which is called “Unterlassungsanspruch” in German).

The Hamburg judge ruled against the plaintiffs and in favor of Adblock Plus, upholding the right of Adblock Plus users everywhere to continue to block annoying ads and protect their privacy.

Now that the legalities are out of the way, we want to reach out to other publishers and advertisers and content creators and encourage them to work with Adblock Plus rather than against us. Let’s develop new forms of nonintrusive ads that are actually useful and welcomed by users; let’s discover ways to make better ads; let’s push forward to create a more sustainable Internet ecosystem for everyone.